Photographs and words

Tag Archives: black and white photography

A key part to this assignment will be choosing a story that works well in an editorial format. I don’t just want the pictures to be strong, I need them to be flexible enough to allow me to play around with the design of 2 DPSs.

Having looked back at my work, I think I have three possibilities but there is one story that I know I really want to work with, which is Mortlake Road.

Please note: Any scanned work at this stage will be rescanned if used in the editorial to obtain maximum resolution.

This set of images has been taken from ‘The Establishing Image’ where we were to find the opening image of a picture story, based around the theme ‘Isolation’.

I chose to photograph my Great Aunt and Uncle – Hugh and Jean Romer. Both are in their 90s and live in a large house in Kew Gardens. For the past year or so, they have been living mostly in the bedroom, as their physical ailments worsen and their dementia continue to grow.

It was a subject I found difficult to photograph, not only because of the nature of the story but because of my relation to them. Although I only took 36 frames (my average for a shoot is 3-4 roles) I think I managed to achieve my strongest set of pictures to date. I think that when there is a tension between subject and photographer, better pictures will often come from it.

I chose to use the bottom picture as my ‘Establishing Image’. I think the picture makes you want to read the story. Her ghostly face and awkward positioning on the stairs creates an eerie quality as she moves from darkness to the light.

I am also very aware that this shot would make an ideal opening shot to an editorial as it contains plenty of negative space to place text. I shot the picture like this because the only way to get a decent exposure was to include the light source in the frame, which I hoped would add to the banality and sadness of the picture.

I then have a choice of 4 pictures for the second DPS. I could use all or just one. I think they all have a place within the story. They were all taken for a reason and I can talk about those reasons within the text. However, I may find that aesthetically something isn’t quite working or the design isn’t allowing for all the images and I will have to make a decision based on what I feel is most important.

My next step is going to be checking the other two stories I considered using.